


they've always been so good at pretend

by princerai



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Other, Past Child Abuse, Sibling Incest, Sloppy Abuse Recovery, Thor's The Adopted One, nonbinary Loki, runaways - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 20:03:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15444780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princerai/pseuds/princerai
Summary: They're finally okay. Escaping in the back of a truck, into the night, and they can finally start being okay.





	they've always been so good at pretend

**Author's Note:**

> it's in the tags. kind of just thrown together. more of a cope piece than an actual piece but i felt like sharing. cw use of the f slur at one point.

It’s scary, living together alone after years of thinking, this is it, this is how I die, but, no, tomorrow they’re still alive, the both of them, and suddenly they’re out of prison after years of chasing their sanity. 

Like taking two steps at a time, to try and match the pace of your friends, but you’re not quite that steady. Like lunging off the edge of a cliff into empty air to escape the claws of a starving beast. 

There’s no warning, no warmup, no thought to it. 

It’s simple— Loki peers across the hall every evening when Thor comes home, after the house has fallen still, after the rafters have taken their fill of the shouting and stomping, and they see their brother sitting awake, staring into some spot in space that doesn’t exist. 

It’s like that every night for a week straight, the purple beneath his eyes stamping deeper and deeper the longer he goes without sleep, and Loki simply ... decides. They have no reason to stay. So why stay. 

(Money. Adulthood. Lessons they were never taught.)

They’d had money beneath the bed, jealously hidden away, because, it didn’t matter how rich he was, apparently the old bastard was entitled to everything they fucking owned. So. Hide it all. Keep it in a shoebox. Make sure it’s a high heel shoebox, he’d never touch something so faggy. 

They drag Thor in by his bruised wrists one evening, bring the box up onto the bed. Opens it like a treasure chest. He stares at the piles of green, and then stares at Loki. 

He asks, because of course he does. 

Loki shrugs— because of course they do, and they say, rich people will do anything to get their fix, it seems. 

Maybe last week Thor would have questioned where they were finding the source of said fix. There would have been a lecture, a reminder that Loki is young, how dare they put their well being on the line like that. 

But that night, Thor gazes at the money with such longing that he doesn’t say a thing. He simply nods, and promises to start packing. 

Between the two of them they only have four bags. They aren’t big bags either— the biggest is hoarded away, hidden in the back of Thor’s truck from prying eyes. 

Together, it takes just a single evening of prep, and they slip away, like they always talked away beneath heavy quilts, the neon clock glowing bright blue beside them, begging them to find sleep but— they found each other first. 

(A disease, spreading through the brain, destroying his eyesight, eating away at the flesh. That’s what took Odin from Thor— and what brought Thor to Loki. He was theirs in an instant, long before Thor had a chance to ever think he belonged to anybody else.)

(Loki fell in love from the moment they saw him, long before they knew what that meant, long before they understood what that meant for the both of them. Maybe it was born of pure loneliness; they loved Thor simply because he was there.)

(It hardly matters because he grew into that love. He took it and draped it around himself, made it fit.)

X

They’re stuck living in the car for a day, because documents and bullshit and bad timing, and it’s a strange night where they have to hunker down in the back of the truck and though the cold night air closes in on them from all sides, it’s easy to pretend they’re home— not home underneath Odin’s roof but Home, underneath Thor’s covers, underneath each other. 

They have only the stars to judge them as Loki takes Thor’s face in their hands, and presses their first kiss to his yielding lips. He breaks beneath them in an instant, tears flowing, and his hands fit the shape of their bony hips, perfectly fitting together. 

There’s not much perfect about their lives. But—

(They’re afraid to call this perfect. They’re afraid to cast a curse upon something going right for once in their life.)

(Thor, on the other hand—)

“You’re fucking perfect. You’re perfect for me.”

Spoken warmly against their lips, without breath, without hesitation. 

Loki knows Thor does not lie. 

They think they might be perfect, and it’s in laying in the bed of a truck, dry rutting against their brother, greedily sapping his heat, his love, his comfort. 

X

And the apartment. Goddamn. Predictably it’s a heap of garbage but it’s their garbage and so it’s good garbage. 

Together, they find themselves playing pretend every day. 

Sunday, Loki pretends to be a church going man, two things they are not. They sneak into the fellowship hour of the nearby chapel, stowing away bagels and cookies and even making off with a pair of coffees. All the while they feign smiles, oh yes, this is their first time here, they’ll highly consider returning— and it’s Thor’s reverent sigh into that coffee that stays with Loki, the offhand comment that they’re a genius.

Monday they pretend that they aren’t shit scared as Thor fingers Loki, spreading them open, getting them ready for their first and they keep muttering that word, brother, brother. Every time, Thor feels Loki’s walls flutter around his fingers, then his tongue, then his cock and he can’t remember the last time he came so hard. Maybe never. Loki doesn’t care that their first was on a mattress on the floor, no sheets, just a heavy scratchy blanket, and they get greedy because they can be greedy, riding Thor til their thighs burn. 

Tuesday Loki pretends to be deaf, as their phone rings and rings and rings and the voicemails pile up and Laufey’s voice returns like a haunting spirit. Thor pretends he isn’t pissed, and in turn Loki kisses the moon crescents from his palms. 

Wednesday is a lot of fucking pretending because they need jobs and Thor pretends he’s plenty experienced enough because apparently you need experience to lift fucking boxes. And Loki pretends they’re a man again, and a man with a good many references, and before the end of the day they’re both employed and again— they pretend they’re not terrified. 

It’s pretending that they’re ready for this, because they have to be, because the alternative means death, maybe not death in a permanent sense but death of what good lays within them. And they lay awake, pretending not to notice the other awake, fingers linked by the pinky, the mattress too tiny for his broad shoulders and their long gangly limbs. 

But like all things, they make it work.


End file.
